RICHMOND — Del. Joe Morrissey, D-Henrico, brandished an unloaded AK-47 assault rifle on the floor of the House of Delegates Thursday in order to highlight a measure he is sponsoring to ban the sale of weapons in the Virginia. Morrissey's stunt was part of a larger public safety legislative agenda put forward by Democratic lawmakers Thursday in response to the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., last month. In addition to an assault weapons ban, House and Senate Democrats want to: • Ban high-capacity magazines that hold more than 30 bullets • Require universal gun background checks, even for private sales • Allow retired law-enforcement officers to work as school safety officers • Strengthen bans on gun ownership of people involuntarily committed to mental health facilities • Increase mental health funding.

Superintendent pay raise As a citizen of Newport News and realizing the school division gets the single most amount of the city's budget, I am very concerned with how this elected school board decided to spend it. My concerns are twofold: the expenditure itself and the methodology behind the approval. Clearly the vote on the superintendent's 'rumored' pay raise was left off the public agenda deliberately. This action alone is duplicitous and shows a complete lack of integrity from every elected official who allowed it to happen.

It sometimes seems that local public agencies go needlessly out of their way to keep their citizens in the dark. When the Daily Press recently asked how much public money was spent on President Barack Obama's latest visit to Hampton, there's nothing that would have precluded them from simply providing us those records. But instead, the City of Hampton and the Virginia State Police are making the newspaper jump through hoops, requiring us to file Freedom of Information Act requests to get the information.